Xbox is planning to have a major hardware shakedown of its current-gen consoles, according to rumors.
Prominent industry leaker Moore's Law is Dead on YouTube alleges that Microsoft is planning a "refresh" of the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, with the Series S redesign coming next year and the Series X one coming the year after (2023), reports WCCFTech.
The Xbox Series S is pegged to get the first redesign, allegedly to serve as a direct counter to the rumored PS5 Slim. Both consoles are expected to launch at the same time frame of late 2022, if the rumors prove to be correct.
Both the Series S and the Series X are alleged to feature new custom AMD APUs based on the 6nm process, which means they're going to be faster (either slightly or significantly). This reworked chip could come with greater than 5 TFLOPS of compute performance, which is obviously better than the current Series S console.
But it would be the price point that could make it upend the base PlayStation 5.
Moore's Law is Dead stated that the planned price for the Xbox Series S refresh is under $350, which would undercut the base PS5 model and potentially also the PS5 Slim.
Furthermore, the new 6nm AMD APU could also mean it will come with an RDNA2 GPU that has all of its 24 CUs (Compute Units) unlocked.
The Xbox Series X is also slated to have the same upgrades as its little brother.
Xbox Series 'Refresh': Does Microsoft Even Need To Do It?
Gaming consoles being refreshed have always happened through the years, even back during the days of the PlayStation 2.
However, Microsoft didn't do redesigns of the Xbox consoles until the release of the Xbox 360, which had a total of two revisions: the Xbox 360 S and the Xbox 360 E, according to BeStreamer.
The same thing went with the Xbox One, which had the One S and the One X versions--both of which offered a substantial upgrade over the base model.
However, these rumored Xbox Series refreshes don't really coincide with what Xbox boss Phil Spencer said back in June.
In a report by IGN, Spencer said that there were "no immediate refreshes on the horizon" for the company's current-gen consoles. Spencer, however, didn't really say they won't have any plans to refresh the hardware.
What About Sony?
These rumors probably wouldn't have surfaced if there weren't any concerning the competing PlayStation consoles. The aforementioned PS5 Slim revision may have popped up because of the new PS5 model surfacing first in Australia and Japan, which had a cheaper heatsink.
Still, there's also no official word on Sony's plans for a major hardware refresh, let alone a PS5 slim. But it's safe to assume they might have, given that they've done it so many times with their previous-generation consoles.
Either way, don't get your hopes up on the Xbox Series refreshes because until Microsoft themselves announce it, it doesn't hold any weight.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
